The Coffin with a fully loaded sound system

Remember back in the stone age when we used to talk about what tracks we would want played at our funeral? Well a Swedish company has just taken things next level with a coffin fully loaded with speakers.Ladies and Gentleman – The CataCombo Sound System.

Death need not be an indignity suffered in silence any more and as gimmicks go, this one is particularly dedicated to the long term view. This is no mere question of docking an ipod, pressing shuffle and leaving the dearly departed to their own devices. Indeed, it comes with a remote server that allows playlists to be tweaked so that living relatives can keep their late loved ones grooving to a constantly evolving playlist.

The system is based on three separate components: CataPlay, a signature application that lets either you or those you’ve left behind put together a playlist. This can then be managed over time, either remotely or by yourself if there’s a couple of involuntary twitches left in you and your brother is piping ‘The Barbie Song’ through your sanctity.

Then there is – er.. CataTomb, an upgradeable server which allows you to keep up with the technological times even as the worms settle in for a chomp. And finally there is a cutting edge 4G connection that streams tunes from Spotify and displays track data on a 7-inch display in case there has been some mistake, you’ve been buried alive and the name of that tune is on the tip of your tongue.

Weighing in at around the 20,000 pound mark, this bizarre idea comes courtesy of dedicated death dynamo Fredrik Hjelmquist who is the owner and CEO of Stockholm-based shop, Pause. Customers can nip down for a test run of “a pair of two-way speakers, divine tweeters with external cooling and one hell-of-a 8-inch subwoofer — fine-tuned to the coffin’s unique interior acoustic space.”